


A Guide to Human Romance in Nine Steps

by WaterandWin



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-01
Updated: 2011-08-01
Packaged: 2017-10-22 02:15:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/232599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WaterandWin/pseuds/WaterandWin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are nine things every troll should know about humans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Guide to Human Romance in Nine Steps

**Author's Note:**

> For Homesmut:
> 
>  _uh... so ok. this is gonna sound dumb and all but I just love it when John is written as the derp that is SO IN LOVE WITH KARKAT IS RIDICULOUS. he's just obsessed with him, he's got such a giant mancrush on the troll he himself feels stupid, but he likes it. he loves it._
> 
>  _so yeah, can I has the most sweet, tender, oh-my-god-Karkat-can-I-touch-your-horns-and-watch-movies-with-you-and-not-so-accidentally-hold-your-hand-and-maybe-kiss-you-and-make-sweet-love-to-you-at-some-point shenanigans ever plz?_
> 
>  _(whether Karkat hates or loves or has no feelings for John is up to anon)_
> 
>  _I'd prefer smut + sappyhappy ending, but anon is free to do whatever they want._

1.  **Humans like to over-complicate everything.**

They insist it’s all very simple, but it’s really not. If it were simple, John wouldn’t have flipped his non-homosexual human earth shit after the kiss and all but ran away when he was clearly the one coming on to you. If it were simple, he wouldn’t have spent six weeks avoiding eye contact and making excuses about being needed elsewhere whenever he and you were in the same room together. If it were simple, his stupid snarky friends would have been some help instead of being ridiculous and cryptic and useless, even though it’s pretty damn obvious a troll has to sink pretty fucking low to ask one of those losers what the fuck is wrong with their mentally-deficient leader. If it were simple, the sarcastic, morbid one wouldn’t have had to lock herself up with John for two hours for some kind of sick feelings jam imitation. And since it’s not simple, all these unnecessary and convoluted human rituals did happen all while you were definitely not starting to beat yourself up about this bullshit being all your fault. 

2.  **Humans have no sense of finesse.**

After a day or two he starts trying to apologize to you, which every good troll knows is fucking stupid because after that long it’s pretty much mutually agreed that had there been hard feelings, someone would be dead by now, and since no one is the whole thing can be forgotten. But oh no, humans have to drag up all the hurt feelings back up in the middle of a fucking hallway where anyone can just waltz right by and overhear fucking everything that John is verbally vomiting up on your shoes about how he’s sorry and what his demented non-problem was this whole time and how he’s not “homosexual” but he’s “a guy that is attracted to another guy” and how “Rose says that’s okay and healthy to admit” and other bullshit that you can’t even fucking process because holy fuck this is dumb and unnecessary. He ends with asking you to watch one of his terrible movies with you later which you really should have flat out rejected except fuck his eyes are fucking enormous when he looks at you like that and if you say no you’ll be back to fucking square one on the next Self-Loathing express so yeah okay fine whatever Egbert. 

3.  **Human movies are shit.**

  
That is, in fact, an understatement. They are forged from the very shitstain of the universe. They are awful, awful things because within the first five minutes you can guess where it’s all going and how it ends because, duh, humans only have one fucking quadrant. See point one on this list for why it takes the protagonists two hours to get there. 

John is enthralled of course and you’re almost,  _almost_  more entertained by his reactions to this embarrassment to the movie industry than by the actual plot. Until he looks over at you that is because then you are so much more fucking interested in the shit Mathew Maconaheyhey spewing than the way the light from the screen reflects off John’s teeth when he bites his wibbly bottom lip to hold back tears.

4.  **Human are impatient little fuckers who can’t sit still through one fucking film.**

When the movie ends it’s your turn to pick what to watch, which means you have to decide if you want to show him the best troll cinema has to offer or pick some utter shit John’s underdeveloped human earth brain actually stands a fighting chance at comprehending. You decide you can’t stomach the latter option after what you were just forced to witness on screen so you pick something in the middle hoping you won’t have to spend ever minute of it explaining what’s going on. Unfortunately, John is much stupider than you gave him credit for, and you didn’t give him much credit to begin with, so he asks a billion retarded questions until you tell him to shut the fuck up and just watch already because he’s missing shit. For once in his life he actually listens to you. 

After five minutes of you not walking him by the hand through ever plot point John starts to squirm. First he sits cross-legged with his elbows on his knees, then he changes to pulling his legs up to his chest, then he drops one leg off the sofa and hugs just one knees, then he drops both legs, shifts a little closer to you, stretches, and blatantly lets an arm drape around your shoulders like it’s supposed to be an accident and not the biggest cliche of movie dates in two universes. 

You look to one side and observe his fingers nervously trying to not feel out of place. You look to the other and see John more focused on the movie he doesn’t understand than he has been this whole time. He’s not breathing and you’re damn sure he’s not holding his breath over the protagonists’ enthralling black-to-red montage. You feel something move in your lap and you look down to witness John’s hand awkwardly groping around to find yours while he’s trying to be smooth about it by not looking. You save him the trouble and fork it over. He fails miserably at trying not to grin when you do. 

The movie is like ten minutes from over and John continues to be the world’s biggest distraction. He’s clearly bored because he’s always trying to pull you closer and make you lean on him or rubbing little circles on the back of your hand with this thumb or leaning his head on yours or laughing when there’s clearly nothing funny on screen, it’s a beautiful and emotional scene and what the windy flying fuck is wrong him.

5. **Humans are sappy little fucks.**

When the credits start to roll he doesn’t even move and maybe you don’t either because you’re warm and comfortable and so what? You’re pretty sure you could stay there forever until you remember why you don’t because John starts to run his mouth and ask questions. At that point you just push him off and tell him to go pick his fucking movie already and he grins the biggest, stupidest fucking grin and scrambles off the couch to do just that. 

Whatever he picks this time is even more ridiculously stupid that what he picked the first time. When he comes back you don’t lie back all over him like you just were and sit by your damn self. He doesn’t try anything and you make it almost half an hour without any sort of move because his eyes are just glued to the screen so hard you could probably leave and he wouldn’t even notice. Except you don’t. You just fucking sit there and stare at John and whoever the fuck the douchebag on screen is but mostly John. 

He definitely doesn’t actually surprise you when he turns to you right before the big climax. This time you don’t have enough of a warning to pretend to be looking somewhere that’s not at him and he grins weakly at you and repositions himself so he’s sitting cross-legged facing you. Before you can ask what the fuck he thinks he’s doing he goes and just grabs your face and starts to mouth the lines while staring you dead in the eye. He knows the fucking script by heart, you’re sure of it, because he doesn’t miss a single word when he pretends you’re the whiny blond chick who’s had her heart broken one too many times and is crying though the whole confession, and he’s the muscley business-savy gentleman who’s never had time for love and suddenly finds himself head over heels, as if it shouldn’t actually be the other way around, you mean really, John’s face is all wet from tears as it is, all he’s missing is the hair. 

Out of the corner of your eye you can see the screen. The love confession storms to a crescendo and the man stops talking and the lady just blinks at him for a second and then they kiss in the rain. But you don’t stick around to watch them suck face because your eyes are back to John so fast you’d give fucking Strider a run for his money but John is just staring at you and his eyes are  _huge_  and if you didn’t know better you’d say he looks fucking terrified. Except he’s not because you know that look, it’s the look he gave you right after he kissed you the last time and it’s the “oh fuck oh fuck what did I just do” look and all you can think is oh fuck oh fuck not this again. You’d fucking push him off but you can’t because you’re just fucking frozen there like his sweaty palms on your face are paralyzing you all the way down to your toes. You can’t really tell if he’s inching closer or considering pulling away so you just squeeze your eyes shut as tight at possible, so tight it kind of hurts, because you really don’t want to see the look in his eyes when he changes his mind, not that it would hurt you or anything, really, this chill in your stomach is probably just from that funny-tasting juice.

6. **Humans are bad kissers.**

The next thing you know your teeth hurt like fuck because John clearly doesn’t know the first thing about kissing and that’s that you don’t ram your face into someone else’s with wild abandon. You try to kiss him back and your noses bump together and his stupid glasses keep being in the way and there are a few fumbling seconds where you’re just trying to coordinate what the other is trying to do and you can tell John is sort of panicking because he just keeps giving pecking kisses to your mouth and he’s crying all over the place and you don’t even know why or what to do about it but his hands are pressing your face to his so you can’t pull away and you just go along with it when he tilts your head to the side so he can kiss you properly. 

When he pulls away neither of you can seem to remember how to breathe properly and are both gulping down huge breaths of air and he’s doing so between sniffles and rubbing his eyes and you just sort of stare at him and ignore the tingling ache in your mouth and marvel at how someone so covered in snot and tears can ever be this attractive. When you find your voice you him why the fuck he’s crying and he just shakes his head. 

“I don’t know,” he hiccups. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t... I’m so happy and relieved and and...”

7.  **Humans make no god damn sense.**

You pull his hand away from his face and grab the front of his shirt and proceed to shut him up with your mouth. Maybe you were a little too harsh because with a little squeak he’s suddenly falling on top of you and your head collides kind of painfully with the armrest. He chuckles, actually fucking chuckles as you slide around to get comfortable, and when you’re about to tell him to can his shit-eating grin even though you prefer it to the blubbering he kisses you again. This time it’s actually better than the first and less frantic. You have one hand on the small of his back and one tracing the outside of his weird rounded human earth ears and he’s balancing himself on his elbows with both hands buried in your hair trying to find the spots where your horns come out of your head. His lips are a little chappy but really really soft compared to troll lips so you can’t complain. Then his tongue darts out between them and you  _really_  can’t complain. He’s sloppy and clueless in trying to get you to open your mouth so you do it anyway. He tastes like salt and gushers and something else you can’t put your finger on but when your hand starts to crawl up the back of his shirt he squirms and pulls away. 

8.  **Humans like things excruciatingly slow.**

“What?”

“This is all going kind of fast, don’t you think?”

Your immediate answer should be no but it isn’t because he’s giving you that big-eyed look again and there goes the memory of what happened last time you went to fast, hovering over your head. You settle for screwing up your mouth and wrinkling your nose and folding your hands on his back on top of the fabric this time to signal defeat. You are the biggest loser. It is you. 

He grins like the biggest idiot there ever was and pushes himself back so he can wrap his arms around your thorax and rest his head on your shoulder like you’re some kind of fucking pillow. Then he just lies there and says nothing until you start to drum your fingers along his spine and he laughs and tell you it tickles and then that you’re soft like it’s a good thing. You tell him to can it and he just squeezes you harder and tell you he likes you word for word the same way the lead in your movie did a few hours ago. So he was paying attention. Wow. That’s, uh, wow. No one’s ever-- wow. Just...you’re not going to say wow again but that’s all there is to say on the matter.

9. **Humans aren’t actually that bad.**


End file.
